On the mountain peak, called “Going-To-The-Sun,” I saw the rooster that no storm can tame, The center of the sun was but his eye, His comb was but the sun rays and the flame. There in the Glacier Park, above white glaciers, There, above Montana and the west, He crowed and called his boast around the world, Emotion shook his red embroidered vest. There is humor in the very biggest rooster, But even more magnificence than fun. I laugh because he acted like a rooster, I am solemn, for he was the biggest one. I like a rooster or a turkey gobbler, I like their forthright impudence at times. They are neither larks, nor trilling nightingales, And yet they always sing in splendid rhymes. When I heard the vast bird of the sunrise crying, The world held not one inch of silly prose. Any rooster is a flowerlike fowl, And this one was a crimson Yankee rose. [Illustration] THE BIRD CALLED “CURIOSITY” Round the mountain peak called “Going-To-The-Sun,” In Glacier Park, a steep and soaring one, Circled a curious bird with pointed nose Who led us on to every cave, and rose And swept through every cloud, then brought us berries, And all the acid gifts the mountain carries, And let us guess which ones were good to eat. And even when we slept his sharp wings beat The weary fire, or shook the tree-top cones, Or rattled dead twigs like a fairy’s bones. The vulgar bird, “Curiosity”! When we Were tired, and lean, and shaking at the knee, We put this bird in harness. He was strong As any ostrich, pulled our packs along, Helped us up over the next annoying wall, And dragged us to the chalet, and the tourists’ resting hall. And when once more we were young, well-fed men, He beat the door to call us forth again. [Illustration] THE THISTLEVINE The Thistlevine saw the butterflies Disappear through the morning skies. [Illustration] AND THEY LAUGHED By the mountain peak, called “Going-To-The-Sun,” A dizzy mountain, where paths twist round and round And nothing in sober order can be found-- I asked the poppies: “What fairies do you see?” And they shook their long stems, and they laughed at me. [Illustration: AND THEY LAUGHED VACHEL LINDSAY 1922] [Illustration] THE FAIRY CIRCUS A fairy ran a circus With a pigeon puffed and proud, A humble bullfrog And a rather solid cloud. She wore her underwear, The rest wore what they had, The frog wore a blue coat Just like his dad. The pigeon wore his feathers And spread himself--O My! The cloud wore sunshine He gathered in the sky. [Illustration] THE BATTLE-AX OF THE SUN On the mountain peak I reached the drift And I took it for a Christmas gift, And I made ten soldiers out of snow.